


One of These Nights

by Dawnwind



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M, Mutual Support, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22069930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnwind/pseuds/Dawnwind
Summary: Written for the January Song challenge on the Starsky/Hutch Original Bromance group. Starsky and Hutch always find support from one another, even on the toughest days. Eagles music.
Relationships: Ken Hutchinson/David Starsky
Comments: 9
Kudos: 37





	One of These Nights

One of These Nights

One a.m. in the squadroom was not the place Hutch ever wanted to be. Particularly after a day which had started—he wearily dug his watch out of the pocket of his slacks and peered at the face. Twenty-two hours earlier. He remembered waking Starsky up after the phone had rung at three in the morning. Starsky’d actually slept through the loud phone bell and Hutch talking to the night watch commander. All hands were called in for what appeared to be a mass suicide.

Seven bodies. Some crazed cult sure that the repetitive date of July 7, 1977 or 7/7/77 was some kind of sign. They’d all dressed in identical blue nightshirts—both men and women--taken some kind of poison which the coroner had not yet identified, and gotten into bed to die.

Gruesome. The sight of them, in a communal dorm room, laying in tidy rows, had sent waves of sweat down Hutch’s spine. Didn’t help that it was blazing hot in the old house where they’d been found. With a stench like nothing else on earth but death. They’d lain there four days before neighbors complained and called in the cops.

“Can’t get it out of my brain,” Starsky groused, shaking his head. “Think they were scared?”

Hutch shrugged, typing a few more inadequate words into his report. How did he convey the shocking domesticity and yet cruel barbarity of the deaths? “They couldn’t cope with the modern world?”

“What would make a person just…” Starsky shuddered, peeling the paper off a Hershey bar. 

The chocolate was soft and half liquid in the un-air conditioned squadroom, the standing fan in the corner only shuffling paper across the desk. Didn’t do a thing to cool the air.

“People want something to cling to that gives them a sense…” Hutch started, stumbling into whatever explanation he could unwrap. “A sense of purpose or a reason to—“

“Exist,” Starsky said succinctly, licking chocolate off his thumb. “So they’re not just fumbling around like the rest of us schmucks.” He jutted his chin at the seven-page manifesto the cult leader had left beside his bed. “They worshiped numbers. All the sevens gave them a sign from above or somethin’.”

From across the room, the rookie detective, McMillan, turned on his transistor radio to a rock station. One of the other cops urged him to turn it up louder. During the day, Dobey would have chastised him up one side and down the other for the unprofessional behavior, but here in the night, with the specters of those newly dead hovering in the air, Hutch welcomed the music. The song sounded sad, with a high, almost eerie tune.

“Makes about as much sense as anything else,” Hutch agreed, reaching over Starsky’s arm to break off a chunk of chocolate. _“One of these nights… crazy old nights…”_ The candy was sweet, thick, and silky on his tongue. He didn’t think he’d ever eaten anything so divine in his life. Or maybe it was just that it counteracted the bitterness of the day. He hadn’t eaten since McMillan brought the detectives at the cult house tacos from Taco Bell about noon. 

_“One of these nights…”_ Starsky sang to the music, _“In between the dark and the light. ”_

Hutch hadn’t registered that he had been singing along to the Eagles until Starsky joined in, their voices barely above a whisper but blending perfectly. _“Get you, baby, one of these nights.”_ Hutch reached for another piece of chocolate and got Starsky’s hand instead, holding tightly. Didn’t matter that the chocolate was melting against their palms. 

Starsky looked straight at him, those dark blue eyes reflecting the sad horror of the day, but he didn’t turn away or pull back his hand.

They sat that way for what was way too long. Without a word. As if a bubble had walled them off from the rest of the cops in the building. The Descendants of Adam cult would stay in their shared memory forever, but he and Starsky could withstand the overwhelming weight of those people’s deaths together. 

Together, they kept one another afloat when the devastation of all the crimes they investigated threatened to drag them under the waves to drown.

Starsky cleared his throat as if the chocolate had choked him. “Eagles are a great band, huh? Makes some kinda weird sense.” He unstuck his hand from Hutch’s, cleaning the chocolate off with his tongue.

“That the night sends demons?” Hutch glanced over at McMillan who was talking on the phone, tapping his pencil in time to the much livelier _Afternoon Delight._ He wasn’t paying any attention to them. Wu and Meadows had their heads down over the first of the crime scene photos, conferring on some pertinent detail.

Hutch used a tissue wetted from the cold coffee in his cup to wipe his sticky palm “We just have to…”

“Find out what turns on your lights?” Starsky asked slyly. “Bet I can, once we finish up this shit-load of paperwork.”

“Only have one more page to go,” Hutch said, suddenly energized. 

Demons and ghosts might be circling the moon, but he had Starsky to keep away the madness and despair.

FIN


End file.
